A Gift Bag of Children's Books

Andrew Jackson? A pistol mouth, a boxing-glove nose and bullets as eyes. Theodore Roosevelt? Gears for eyes, a light-bulb nose and a coiled-wire mustache. Piven's highly inventive collage portraits are matched with amusingly quirky tidbits about the Presidents (the pugnacious Jackson's penchant for dueling, the busy Roosevelt's bustling energy). Most of the jokes are benign — George W. Bush, a former baseball-team owner, has a hot-dog nose and buns for eyebrows — but Piven also meets darker facts head on: Richard Nixon's face is formed with a tape recorder, and his prominent nose is actually an ear. It's all so sprightly that young readers won't realize they're learning history. They'll think they're just having fun.

Atheneum; $15.95

The Friend
By Sarah Stewart Pictures by David Small

This wistful tale in verse, lyrically illustrated by the writer's husband, tells how Belle, a neglected child of privilege, befriends her housekeeper Bea in lieu of absentee parents. Day in, day out, the pair do gardening, shopping and housework together, punctuated by regular outings to the house's beachfront--"Belle and Bea, by the sea, hand in hand." The tact with which Bea fills a maternal role is touching, the warmth of their bond palpable. One day Belle ventures onto the beach by herself and chases her big red ball into the sea. A crisis ensues that teaches her the true measure of Bea and the true meaning of friendship. In a poignant twist, the book's final page reveals the identity of grownup Belle: author Stewart.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $16

Mister Seahorse
By Eric Carle

The celebrated author-illustrator Carle triumphs again with a gorgeous undersea narrative. After Mrs. Seahorse lays her eggs in her husband's pouch for safekeeping, Mr. Seahorse drifts through a series of dazzling scenes. Clear plastic overlays bearing paintings of reeds, a coral reef, seaweed and a rock can be lifted away and — ta-da!--riotously colorful fish emerge. Mr. Seahorse meets other fish tending their eggs — a stickleback, a tilapia, a Kurtus nurseryfish, a pipe and a bullhead catfish. What they all have in common is that they are males, and Mr. Seahorse offers each a comradely word of praise for the job he is doing. By the end, two things have been delivered: Mr. Seahorse's spawn and a gentle salute to the role of at least some fathers in birthing their young.

Philomel Books; $16.99

Teeth, Tails, & Tentacles: An Animal Counting Book
By Christopher Wormell

Never was counting more fun than with Wormell's boldly beautiful linoleum-block prints. The sequence goes from 1 (rhinoceros horn) to 20 (barnacle shells on a whale). Each image is reinforced by a facing page showing the Arabic numeral, the number written out and a brief description of the critter part being counted. As the numbers go up, the images tend to get more complex (16 catfish whiskers, 18 diamond markings on a rattlesnake), but even the simpler ones are ingenious, as in a chameleon's three colors blending into a tricolor scene. After 20, the book takes us back to 1 with a lone humpback whale — an invitation to start over, which little arithmeticians will want to do again and again.

Running Press; $18.95

The Turn-Around, Upside-Down Alphabet Book
By Lisa Campbell Ernst

Take the letter D, for instance. Turn it to one side and it's a laughing mouth, to the other and it's a frog's eye. Upside-down, it's a teacup handle. Or take Q. On its side, it's a magnifying glass or a tag on a dog's collar; upside-down it's a pendulum on a clock. This is hands-on entertainment (and education) in which part of the pleasure is physically rotating the book to follow each letter's permutations. For adults, Ernst's geometric designs and striking hues may evoke the color-field experiments of artist Josef Albers. Kids will be more interested in the way an upside-down A becomes a drippy ice-cream cone or a sideways E turns into an electric plug. Ernst's ingenuity is equal even to the challenge of letters that don't change when turned, like O (a bagel, an owl's eye, a fried egg) and X (a railroad-crossing sign, a treasure map's end, a ballerina's shoe ribbons).

Simon & Schuster; $15.95